We end this week of honorable mentions
(that sounds better than Top 10
leftovers, right?) with
Twist
Mountain.
This should be exciting… nothing
to do with the card; I just am going to
try to be concise today since I only
have 15 minutes to write!
I normally take at least an hour.
Stats
Twist
Mountain
is Trainer, specifically a Stadium.
This section can often seem like
filler, but when we get to the effect,
you’ll see that being a Trainer that
remains in play until discarded by
another effect (most likely another
Stadium being played) defines the
effect, and explains a lot of
misconceptions I believe plague this
card.
Remember that as a Stadium, you
can only play a single copy a turn, and
if a card with the same name is already
in play, you can’t even play that single
copy.
It didn’t always work like that
for Stadiums, and while those changes
make sense, they were more powerful when
you could play as many Stadium cards per
turn as you wanted, regardless of name.
For better or worse, right now
there isn’t much support (or counters
for) Stadium cards, but what is relevant
to
Twist
Mountain
better fits in Usage.
Effects
The effect of
Twist
Mountain
is that once per turn the turn player
may flip a coin and if the result is
“heads”, play a Restored Pokémon from
his or her hand to his or her Bench.
This is a simple and quite deck
specific effect; so the mixed blessing
is that either a deck won’t be able to
use it or a deck will be able to use it
well indeed.
Before
Twist
Mountain,
Restored Pokémon were dead in hand; now
you have a 50% chance of playing a
single Restored Pokémon per turn if it
is there.
Honestly, this is a weak effect.
Think about it; as a Stadium you
can only use the effect
once per turn, so if you think you
can rely on just this to play Restored
Pokémon, you can’t rely on them for
anything major… which begs the question
why you would bother running something
so unreliable and difficult to get out
if it wasn’t central to your deck. With
the actual power level of Restored
Pokémon compared to even the many
Evolutions that look interesting or fun
but aren’t currently good enough to see
play, you should just get to Bench one
per turn, or be able to reveal your hand
and flip a coin for each one in your
hand.
Usage
I am not done explaining why
Twist
Mountain
is ultimately a poor card, but the rest
falls under Usage better.
As stated, you shouldn’t be
relying on
Twist Mountain alone unless you
somehow have a deck that can spare room
for it and some Restored Pokémon that
somehow are worth the deck space without
being important enough to your deck to
get out quickly; remember you’re just
averaging one every other turn!
Decks focusing on Restored
Pokémon should use this, but it will be
in addition to the correct Item that
looks at the bottom seven cards of your
deck and plays the Restored Pokémon from
there.
Remember, that is both searching
the card out and playing it.
You can play multiple of those
Items per turn, and while they have a
high risk of failure… so does
Twist Mountain.
Remember, you’ve got to draw into
or search out a Restored Pokémon so that
it is in hand, or
Twist
Mountain
just sits there doing nothing.
Even when you’ve got at least one
in hand, “tails fails” means it is just
a 50% chance of working; with the right
build you can make those “bottom seven”
search cards find and play the desired
Restored Pokémon almost as reliably.
While it is good that in hand Restored
Pokémon are no longer deadweight, since
Twist Mountain only works in hand it
clashes with the specific
search-and-play Items if you bother
running anything to get the Restored
Pokémon into hand.
Considering the Restored Pokémon
don’t seem to be on par with even the
“near misses” of the format, why they
are so hard to play is beyond me: both
the Pokémon specific Items and
Twist Mountain are sorely
underpowered.
After all that, the format
already has a widely played Stadium card
(Skyarrow
Bridge) that will likely discard
Twist Mountain
the turn after
Twist Mountain is played!
If you max out on
Twist Mountain, then you’ll probably
get the final Stadium, but if you run
even three you’ll be jockeying for
position.
Still, if you want to run them, you run
this, and there are some Pokémon that
can help make the whole thing run
better.
Actually, just one Pokémon and it
works with just about everything else;
Tornadus EX (BW: Dark Explorers
90/108, 108/108).
I mean, you’ll need some basic
Pokémon in the deck unrelated to the
Restored Pokémon anyway, and at least
the Stadium is triggering the damage
boost of the first attack of
Tornadus EX (Blow Through).
I thought about
Porygon2 (HS: Triumphant
49/102), because its Poké-Power searches
out a Stadium from your deck, but it
only triggers when it Evolves.
Unless you can come up with a
Trainer Engine to get it out and Evolved
fast enough, you might as well stick to
generic draw/search power (mostly draw
of course) since by the time you fish
out and Evolve into
Porygon2, you’re nothing ahead.
Porygon-Z (HS: Triumphant
7/102) would help as well, and really
almost makes me want to run the line
but… it is a Stage 2 Pokémon with 110
HP, and the entire point of using
Porygon2 means you shouldn’t use
Rare Candy to Evolve it.
Its “top deck a Trainer [note:
meaning Item] card from the discard on a
coin flip” effect wasn’t good enough for
the other Item-heavy decks of the
format, so I doubt it would be up to the
task for an already fragile Restored
Pokémon deck.
In Unlimited, I wouldn’t bother with
Restored Pokémon, in part because I
wouldn’t want to give up my valuable
Stadium slot for
Twist
Mountain;
that is before factoring in this is a
format of first-turn-win decks!
In Limited play, this is a must
play only if you have a Restored
Pokémon.
In this set, that is
Aerodactyl, and the more you pull
the more I recommend you run
Twist Mountain.
Ratings
Unlimited:
1/5
Modified:
2/5
Limited:
3.6/5
Summary
Twist
Mountain
most definitely did not deserve to be on
the Top 10 list; yes it helps Restored
Pokémon decks but not enough.
I know some people see this and
think it is great for Restored Pokémon,
but even there it is only “better than
nothing”.
If I had to pick between running
a single Restored Pokémon in a deck and
one method of getting it into play, I’d
actually choose the Pokémon-specific
Item cards because maxed out on I could
risk blitzing to get them into play.
Search
and play, remember?
As for the ones in hand,
Junk Arm discards them and
Super Rod recycles them… assuming I
wanted to try again (in which case
Junk Arm probably was snagging the
very search card I needed).
You
should run both
Twist
Mountain
and the needed Items, but even together
either they or the Restored Pokémon are
far too weak (possibly both).
I took 45 minutes to write this.
I’m in trouble. >_<
